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One of the most beautiful things I’ve learned in recovery is how to forgive—how to really, truly, honestly forgive. That includes forgiving yourself. It’s not always easy, and I am certainly not perfect at it. But I’m doing it a little better every day, I think.
One sneaky key to learning to forgive for me has been the 14-day forgiveness plan. I’ll explain my interpretation and usage of it in a second, but here’s the specific passage of the Big Book where it discusses the two-week plan for forgiveness. It’s from Page 552, and it goes like this:
“If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don’t really want it for them and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks, and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate and understanding and love.”
Wow. What a passage, and what a concept. I remember the first time it was suggested to me, I thought, “Wait, you want me to pray for the guy I am really pissed at? What?!?!”
And my early attempts at this were mostly, “Hey God, please help my neighbor to stop being such an asshole.” Upon closer review, I think that is not how the passage is intended.
There are so many things that jumped out at me. I’ll give them to you as a list:
—The two-week prayer plan has worked every single time I have ever tried it, even when I knew for a fact that it wouldn’t help. It always did.
—I don’t think this prayer only works for alcoholics and drug addicts. If you’re not in sobriety and you’re reading this, give it a try. I bet you will be surprised.
—The key to the whole thing is in the first sentence—this has to be a resentment that you really want to be free of. If you still love being pissed at Craig from accounting or Marcia from the school PTO, chances are your success rate is going to be quite low.
—I love that it says even if you don’t really want those things for the other person, do it anyway. I am someone who loves the word “begrudgingly,” because most of my growth as a human happened against my wishes and against my instincts. I get dragged kicking and screaming into spirituality and freedom and serenity.
—The last part of the reading suggests that you will come to genuinely want that person or thing to get the love from your prayers, and that your own feelings of anger and resentment will be replaced by compassion and love. For that second part, I have 100 percent, every single time, seen my own feelings evolve to a much, much better place. But do I always end up really full-heartedly wish the other person well? Let me put it this way: I have found myself doing the two-week forgiveness plan on the same person multiple times, usually a few months apart. So I can’t pretend that it cleanses my soul and warms my heart all the way through for eternity. I seem to take that heart and throw it in the fridge for six weeks, then have to toss it in the microwave to warm it up again.
—Last but not least, the 14-day thing is key. Like so many other things in recovery, the repetition is crucial. I have had a few times where I pray for someone for five or eight days, and I feel much better about whatever situation. So then I stop, and usually within a few days, the anger comes roaring back. It reminds me how sometimes you’ll get an illness where you’re prescribed a week of antibiotics but then you feel well four days in and you stop—apparently you should take the antibiotics as prescribed, until the end of the period they’re prescribed for. And in this case, that’s 14 days.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
HEARD AT MEETINGS
"DEFINITION OF AN ALCOHOLIC:
Someone who refuses to give up a life of failure without a fight."
(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2004, by Anonymous)
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